Russian Veteran Rights Organization Says It Will Not Register As ‘Foreign Agent’

(Interfax – September 21, 2012) Following the Moscow Helsinki Group and the movement For Human Rights, the Russian human rights society “Memorial” has decided not to fulfil the requirement envisaged by the amendments to the legislation that oblige non-commercial organizations, receiving Western grants, to be registered as a “foreign agent”, Russian news agency Interfax reported on 21 September.

“Memorial will not take part in the move that is directed at destroying Russian society and will not disseminate deliberately false information about itself. If we are required to add Memorial to the list of ‘foreign agents’, we will oppose this , in court in the first place. We are a human rights organization and will do our best to defend our right on the basis of the law,” the statement of the Memorial Board of Directors said.

“This law is illegal and immoral in its essence. It is illegal because it endows the executive power with the authority of the court. And it is immoral because it a priori believes that organizations that receive money from overseas act at the instructions of their sponsors; in other words, at the supreme state wisdom level it proclaims the cheap thieves’ maxim: ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’,” the statement says.

“In recent Russian history campaigns around ‘nets of foreign agents’ that allegedly existed in our country have more than once acted as propaganda provision for state terror and persecution of dissidents. It is sufficient to recall 1937-38 when hundreds of thousands of people were made to confess they were ‘foreign agents’. Later critics of the regime were often declared ‘Western mercenaries’. Needless to say, poisoning the national conscience with CheKa (security) tales of ‘foreign agents’ is a time-tested method to escape from resolving real social problems,” Memorial said.